


Shining Like Diamonds

by crankybossiplier



Category: youtube - Fandom
Genre: Australia AU, Cry is a street performer, Ethan is a street performer, Everybody lives in Melbourne AU, F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Mark and Chica are street performers, Matt and Ryan are street performers, Nate is a street performer, Signe is a street performer, Troye is a street performer, and wade and molly, cause Melbourne is fun, cause they're awesome, everyone else is just enchanted by them, except for bob and mandy, gay ships are yay ships, he was awesome, inspired by a street performer I saw in Melbourne, most people are gay, one ship at a time, sad I didn't get his name, street performer au, youtube au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankybossiplier/pseuds/crankybossiplier
Summary: AU. In which half of the gang are street performers in Melbourne, and the annual Food and Wine Festival is in town. The other half of the gang are just enchanted.(Title from "The Beautiful People" by Christina Aguilera.)Chapter 1: Tyler and Ethan.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so instead of updating "My Missing Puzzle Piece" like I SHOULD... I came up with this, after seeing a really awesome street performer in Melbourne during the F&W Festival. it's awesome. if any of you live in or around Melbourne and were there, I hope you enjoyed it! the performer I saw (I reeeeally wish I got his name so I could see if he has a facebook or twitter page) inspired Ethan's performance in this chapter.
> 
> also, like in MMPP, basically everyone is gonna be in a gay relationship. gay ships are yay ships!!
> 
> (I can't stop coming up with youtube AUs... send help)
> 
> well, I hope you like it! :)

As Tyler walked down the busy streets of Melbourne one cloudless night, he didn’t think anything would be different. He’d finished work for the day and he’d caught a train and a tram to the Crown for something to eat. He felt too tired to cook today.

Having finished eating, he decided to walk down the outside street as the sun finished setting, sipping a soft drink. The annual Food and Wine festival was in the city, and he wasn’t expecting anything to be particularly different this year.

Oh, how life proved him wrong.

A whooping and cheering crowd attracted his attention, and he wandered over to see what the fuss was all about. Peering over the shoulders of the taller people in the crowd, he saw a streak of brilliant blue flash through the air, and the crowd cheered again.

Finding a gap in the crowd, he finally managed to see a small boy in the centre of the crowd, balancing on his hands and doing movements with his legs. He bent his arms and straightened them again, and then gracefully rolled forwards and stood up in one fluid motion. The crowd applauded him.

He bent over and scooped a microphone off the ground. “Thanks, guys,” the boy said, and Tyler was surprised to hear that his voice was young. Looking closer, he barely looked 21 years old: the boy was small and thin, his body made thinner by the tight-fitting top and leggings he wore. “Y’know, being a gymnast is real tough work. Everybody looks at girls and says, ‘You can be a beautiful gymnast if you train hard and work at it!’, but nobody ever tells boys the same thing. And that saddens me a lot, because if men wanna be gymnasts they gotta train a lot harder, cause they have the, uh…” he waved  a hand in front of his crotch, “the _junk_ that women don’t have, y’know?” The crowd laughed good-naturedly, and Tyler grinned. “And let me tell you, it was painful to watch girls land pelvis-first on the beam, but… hoo boy, I’m pretty sure it hurt me a _lot_ more.” He grimaced and looked away.

A few people laughed louder than the rest, clapping and whooping their agreement.

“Is anybody here a gymnast?” the boy asked. “Does anybody here do something like gymnastics or dancing?”

He looked around, and quickly moved over to someone in the front row. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Lily,” a little girl’s voice replied.

“Do you do gymnastics, Lily?” There was a short pause. “That’s awesome! How long have you been doing it for?” Another short pause. “Three years? Wow, that’s a fair while. Do you think you’ll keep doing it for another three years?” There was another pause, and the audience near the girl giggled. “That’s awesome. You keep working at gymnastics and you’ll be a wonderful gymnast one day.” He stood up again, and Tyler saw the top of the boy’s dyed-blue hair. “Can we please get a round of applause for Lily here?” he asked loudly, and the crowd applauded earnestly.

He walked back to the middle of his stage again, looking around. “Anybody else…?” he asked. When nobody offered, he looked put out. “Wow,” he said shortly. “We’re in short supply these days, huh?” A few people chuckled again. “We’re going to go extinct at this rate.” He shrugged. “But then again, it does take a long time of motivation and practice to do stuff like this, I guess.” He had picked up a hula hoop off the ground, hooked his foot onto it and raised it into the air, perfectly straight, and hooked the other side of the hoop around his elbow. He didn’t even wobble while standing on one leg. A few people in the audience clapped. “And being a gymnast and a street performer is double the hardship. This _is_ my job, I’m not sponsored or anything.”

The boy pulled his leg closer to his body and threaded himself through the hoop, flicking the hoop off his foot and catching it with ease. “I’m 20 years old and this is what I do for a living. Some may call it sad, but I love what I do.” He twirled the hoop around his arm. “All street performers love what we do, or we probably wouldn’t be doing it.” He chucked the microphone up, switched the hoop the other arm, and caught the microphone in the other hand. “So, supporting street performers is a really important thing to do. Cheering and applause lets us go home happy and feeling like we’ve done a good thing, which is entertain you guys. And girls. And everyone in between.” He flicked the hoop into the air, picked another one off the ground and started spinning that around his arm, and caught the first hoop on the same arm. “And at the very end, if you make a small donation, it’ll help me eat and pay rent for the next week.”

He looked around at the audience. “And whatever happens, do _not_ call an ambulance. I’m not covered.” A few people giggled. “I’m just Ethan the street gymnast, not Ethan-the-street-gymnast-who-can-afford-to-pay-hospital-bills.”

Ethan. So that was his name.

Ethan flicked the hoops off his wrist and caught them, laying them on the ground. “Now!” he declared loudly. “I’m gonna need some of you guys to help me out for the finale of this show. As you can see, I have buckets, and I have planks of wood.” He gestured to the items lying on the ground. He picked up the buckets. “I have eight buckets. So I need eight people to help me out here. Do a friend a favour, and hold these buckets for me. When I say so, you need to chuck them at me.”

He started throwing them at people in the crowd. Tyler watched them get excited that they were involved. “What about Mr Tall Guy over there? Grey beanie?”

Tyler realised that Ethan was talking about him.

“Hold a bucket for me?” Ethan was asking.

“Sure,” Tyler replied.

“Sweet!” Ethan chucked him a bucket, and then kept going around the front row of the crowd. “I also have four planks of wood here, so I need four more people to hold these for me. Do a friend a favour, and _don’t_ chuck these at me.” The crowd chuckled again, and Ethan allocated for people to hold the planks for him. As he was handing them out, Tyler noticed that the planks got thinner and thinner, until it looked like Ethan would barely be able to stand on them.

Ethan got two people to throw buckets at him, and then one person handed him the largest plank. He stood on top of the plank, and jumped on it a few times to prove it was sturdy. He got two more people to chuck him buckets, and then he looked at the person with the next plank.

“Give it here!” he asked, and the person threw it lightly at him. Ethan barely managed to catch it with the empty hand that wasn’t holding the microphone. “Holy hell, I said _not_ to chuck it at me!” he said in a funny high-pitched voice. “Jesus Christ Almighty, I don’t wanna die tonight!” A few people laughed, and Ethan arranged the planks so that he could lightly hop up on it.

“Okay, going good so far.” He got one person to throw him a bucket, and then he looked at Tyler. “What’s your name?” he asked, as he had done for every person previous.

“Tyler,” Tyler answered.

“Okay, Tyler, you be careful now,” he said. “You look like you could knock me into the next street with those muscles.” Tyler laughed. “Seriously, dude, I’m like, half your size. Now chuck me that bucket and try not to let it knock me over, okay?” Grinning, Tyler lightly threw him the bucket, and Ethan caught it with ease. “Oh, thank god, he knows his own strength. I was worried there for a second.” Ethan laughed nervously, and put the buckets down. “Now whoever has the next plank, do _not_ throw it at me.”

It went well, all the way up until Ethan was on the very top plank, where he was balancing on the ball of one foot on a very thin piece of wood. Tyler was now looking up at him, and could see the boy a lot easier. He was cute, actually. Everyone was silent, wondering what he was going to do next. Ethan looked around at them all. “’ _Oh wow, he’s got awesome balance!’_ ” he said in a high pitched voice. “Oh gee, thanks guys!” The crowd laughed. “’ _I wonder if he’s single!’_

“Now Lily, are you still here?” Ethan asked. “Great, you wanna come here and help me out?” Lily walked up to Ethan as the crowd laughed loudly, Tyler among them. “I’m gonna give you this microphone, and you’re gonna carefully put it on the ground, okay? Be gentle, I can’t afford another one. When you’ve done that, do you want to pass me all of those hula hoops?” Lily nodded. “Fantastic, thank you!” He handed down the microphone, and took up the large bundle of hula hoops.

“Let’s see how this goes!” Ethan said loudly, having to compensate for not having the microphone. He chucked them into the air one after another, and threaded them onto various limbs as they came back down. Soon there were hoops around his arms, neck, torso, and one leg. He twisted and turned his limbs around, pivoting on his one foot. It was magical to watch, and Tyler was mesmerised by the movements of the boy.

Ethan managed to get all of the hoops on one arm, and he held that arm out and kept twirling them as he took a bow, and everybody cheered. Ethan let the hula hoops slow to a stop, and then he bent forwards to lean them against the planks before flinging himself backwards. He spun gracefully through the air, landing on his feet, and then bent backwards onto his hands and over onto his feet again, and took another bow and people cheered louder.

Walking around and picking up the microphone again, he said, “Thank you everybody for sticking around, you’ve all been really awesome tonight. Please remember to keep supporting street performers, we can’t do this without you all.” He took the top plank off and put one of the buckets on the ground. “If any of you have any spare coins lying around, or five dollar notes even, it would be greatly appreciated! It will go towards my certain future hospital bills…” he trailed off, laughing with fake nerves, and the crowd started moving in and throwing coins and notes into the bucket. Ethan glowed with happiness.

When the crowd had parted a little, Tyler went up to him and dropped ten dollars into the bucket.

“Thank you!” Ethan said. “And thank you for not knocking me out with that bucket earlier.” Ethan winked at him, and Tyler couldn’t do anything but smile back.

“No worries,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to pay those hospital bills.”

Ethan laughed. “No,” he replied, dragging out the word. “Not the dreaded hospital bills.”

Tyler grinned. With a sudden burst of courage, he asked, “Have you eaten tonight?”

Ethan looked a little surprised, but shook his head. “Nah, haven’t had a chance,” he answered. “What’s in this bucket will dictate what I eat tonight.”

Tyler looked him up and down and continued, “I’ll shout you dinner?” he offered.

 _Now_ Ethan looked surprised. “No, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “I don’t want to keep you from anything.”

Tyler shook his head with a smile. “I want to, really,” he insisted. “If you haven’t got anything on.”

Ethan grinned and looked down, his hair flopping in front of his face. Then he looked up with a small smile and said, “Well, how can I refuse dinner with a guy like you?” he said cheekily. “If you let me pack up and get changed, I’ll be right with you.”

Tyler helped Ethan get all of his things together and put them in his car, and Ethan grabbed a bag that Tyler assumed had a change of clothes, and Tyler took him to a small café for a light dinner. Ethan shyly told Tyler what he wanted to eat, and ducked into the bathroom to change.

When Ethan emerged from the bathroom, Tyler’s first thought was _“Oh, shit.”_

Ethan had changed into ripped black skinny jeans and a black jacket with white lining, and now he was wearing glasses. He didn’t look like a small, fragile gymnast anymore – he looked like someone that belonged in the city, like someone who owned the city.

“Sorry I took a while,” Ethan apologised, sliding into a seat opposite Tyler. “Couldn’t find my glasses. I thought I’d dropped them somewhere.”

Tyler smiled at him, but was spared trying to find something to say when the waitress came over with Ethan’s food and Tyler’s coffee.

They talked while Ethan ate. Tyler learned that Ethan had been doing gymnastics for about fifteen years, which Tyler admired. He learned that Ethan loved to play video games but couldn’t afford them, so he went over to his friend’s house and played them a lot there. He learned that Ethan didn’t really care for university, he just wanted to do gymnastics and street performing for as long as he possibly could.

He learned that Ethan used to get asked to do all sorts of crazy stunts by his friends at school, so one day he was asked to perform on the street at a festival, and he just kept on doing it. Performing and entertaining was Ethan’s passion, and Tyler could clearly see it when Ethan talked about it.

When Ethan had finished eating and Tyler had finished his drink, Tyler paid for the meal and they went out onto the street again.

“Thanks for dinner, Tyler,” Ethan said as they walked to Ethan’s car. “Really.”

“No worries,” Tyler replied.

They stopped at Ethan’s car, and Tyler’s heart sank at the thought of saying goodbye to the lively blue-haired boy. Ethan looked up at him, biting his lip.

“Do you…” he started, and Tyler patiently waited for him to finish. “D’you think that we could do this again sometime?” he asked, looking hopeful.

Tyler smiled down at him. “Of course,” he replied. “I’d love to.”

Ethan’s smile seemed to light up the street. “When can I see you again?” he asked.

“Tomorrow, same time?” Tyler suggested, and Ethan nodded.

“That sounds great. I’ll meet you where I perform?” After an obvious hesitation, he leaned up and lightly kissed Tyler’s cheek. “I’ll see you then!”

“Bye,” Tyler replied.

After Ethan’s car had disappeared into the night, Tyler gently touched the spot that he had kissed. He was _definitely_ seeing Ethan again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos mean the world to me :)


End file.
